Note: reprinted from Yoga International Vol 3, Number 6
May/June 1994

O
n every day but one during the last five months of his life, I
was with Paul Brunton in the Montreux area of Switzerland.
Much
worth writing about happened during those months, much worth
knowing about. I came to see how much more there was to him
than
I could glean from his books alone. Without knowing him as I
did,
he may well have remained just another gifted writer with whom
I
sometimes agreed, sometimes not. He certainly would not have
become, as he is now, one whose words I take to heart even
more
deeply when they disagree with what I already think than when
they agree.

But writing truthfully about Paul Brunton is difficult for me,
as well as for others who knew him. It's not so much that we're
not willing, though sometimes that too is the case. More often
it's simply because we're not able. The part of ourselves that
drew to him remains deeper than we yet understand or can
explain.
So we end up describing that instead of him, or reacting to how
awakening to its presence has affected our own lives instead of
speaking truthfully about his.

Writing about his teachings is much easier. That allows a safe
intellectual distance from undomesticated parts of ourselves
that
emerged when we were with him--good parts and bad parts, both of
which inevitably crashed through the boundaries of our
self-images and images of what spirituality means.

It would be easier, for example, to fashion an intellectually
fascinating article by focusing on a few key points in his
teaching--how Hinduism and Buddhism need each other and together
form a complete doctrine, for example; or why the goal of
spiritual practice can be neither annihilation of the ego nor
its
merger with or dissolution into the unselfed Absolute; or why
equating atman with brahman is a needlessly
exaggerated statement of an already sufficiently tremendous
truth; or tracing his movement from what he ultimately called
"Idolatry" of his early years to his mature vision of
the West's spiritual revival in terms of its own creative and
native mind. In all these places he lends precision to our
desire
for freedom by offering clearer intellectual distinctions than
have been readily available in either the West or the East for a
long time.

His scholarship was excellent, after all, though in his
writing he deliberately forsook the academic style. He had the
benefit of in-depth practice, study, and dialogue with many
great
teachers--including Ramana Maharishi, V.S. Iyer, Atmananda, M.
Hiriyanna and T.M.P. Mahadevan among the Hindus and Ananda
Metteya among the Buddhists. He also kept abreast of the latest
developments in modern scientific thinking, both inner and
outer,
and could speak knowledgeably about such things as the effects
of
Heisenberg's spontaneous experience of nirvikalpa samhadi.

It would be even easier to write about the outer glamour of
parts of his life: his extensive travels in both hemispheres--by
steamship, donkey, camel, etc.,--seeking out faithkeepers and
advanced practitioners of esoteric teachings long before such
journeys were even heard of, let alone popular. There are
engrossing stories about his intimate relationships with Asian
and European royalty, and with groups of oppressed seekers
behind
the Iron Curtain, who would have been imprisoned if caught with
him or his books. There are the reasons Somerset Maugham sought
his advice about whom to visit on his trip to India--and why
Paul
Brunton sent him to Ramana Maharishi's ashram, where Maugham has
the experiences he wrote about in The Razor's Edge.

There are also instructive stories about how his two marriages
played out in the imaginations of would-be disciples who
couldn't
accept them and what they meant for Brunton himself. There are
his early experiments with occultism, culminating in his being
the first European to spend a night alone in the Great Pyramid.
(He later observed that he was extremely fortunate to have
gotten
through that phase without losing his sanity.) There's also the
little-known fact that one of his first spiritual teachers was
an
Iroquois Indian, and related stories of his extensive experience
with North American shamans.

But for me, as I reflect on him today, all these things seem
too much on the surface, too "outer." They hold no
promise of conveying the dynamic peace I felt in his presence--a
peace so rich that it calmed the entire emergency room of the
hospital where I brought him at the end.

They tell nothing, or too little, of how he was not only an
astonishing source both of information but also of life-changing
inspiration; nothing or too little, about how this intellectual
giant--this charming, kind, and sophisticated British
gentleman--was also an authentic spiritual presence.

Admittedly, the Paul Brunton I knew was the one in which an
extraordinary life had nearly completed itself. I first met him
in 1977, when he was seventy-eight. So I'm not a source of
firsthand information about steps along the way--or about
"mistakes" as we might call them, that he made enroute.
There are many versions of many things about his life. Others
tell those better than I can, each adding his or her own two
bits
to the mixture of myth and reality a secondary literature is
sure
to produce.

But perhaps I can convey something of what makes this
man so hard and yet so important to understand, and why the
voluminous writings he left us behind deserve special attention.
If so, it's likely to come across best if I simply tell a few
stories.

Different Faces

One bright day in the spring of 1981, P.B. (as Paul Brunton
was affectionately known) was walking me toward a vegetarian
restaurant in Lausanne. A Lebanese man in his early twenties
quickly crossed the street just ahead of us and then cautiously
approached from a short distance ahead.

"Hello," he said tentatively, and then paused for an
uncomfortably long time before P.B. answered, "Yes?"

"Can I please...just spend a little time with you?"

P.B. looked at him silently for a moment, then asked,
"Why should you want to do that?"

"I don't know," the young man answered. "I just
have a feeling that if I do, something wonderful might
happen."

"If something wonderful happens," P.B. replied, it
will be because of you. I don't do anything."

As it turned out the young man worked in the restaurant we
were head to, joined us for lunch, and saw that we got the best
food the place had to offer. Until the night before, he had no
conscious interest in things spiritual; but that night a friend
had given him a copy of Gurdjieff's Meetings with Remarkable
Men, and he stayed up all night reading it. "When I saw
you across the street," he explained, "I said to
myself, 'I don't know how I know but that's one of those
guys!"

That was the first of several meetings we had with that young
man whose name was Nouki. When he arrived for a third meeting at
a tea house in Lausanne, he was so exuberant that his face
didn't
seem large enough to hold his smile. P.B. asked him what he was
so happy about. Nouki replied that being with P.B. filled him up
with love.

"Why do you think that is?" asked P.B.

"Maybe because you love everybody?" Nouki
answered.

"No," P.B. replied. "I am not that advanced. I
don't love everybody." Later in the day when P.B. and I were
alone, P.B. said of Nouki: "That young man has already
acquired half his wealth in his temperament. Now he only needs
the intellectual understanding." At this point Nouki didn't
even know P.B.'s name or that he had written books.

One morning as the three of us were walking together, a Swiss
German man who wrote on spiritual topics approached us. He knew
of P.B.'s literary work and wanted to ask some questions. P.B.
seemed somewhat reluctant but finally said, "All right, I
will have a cup of tea with you."

That afternoon, the four of us met for tea. P.B. sat at my
left; Nouki sat across from me; the Swiss writer sat across from
P.B. Nouki, as usual, was enjoying the atmosphere of being
together. The writer was eager to pin P.B. down about certain
doctrinal issues, particularly about Krishnamurthi's formulation
of the teaching. P.B. seemed more interested in hearing how the
Swiss man liked his tea, but the only answer he got in that
regard was a quick "Oh, it's fine" as the writer
persisted in trying to get the answers he wanted.

Nouki began to get annoyed, and started to criticize the Swiss
man's demeanor. And then things got particularly interesting.

"Well," P.B. said to Nouki, how would you answer
that question?"

"What question?"

From that point on P.B. began to look physically different to
me depending on which of them he was talking to. When he turned
to Nouki, it was to make him aware of how important the writers
questions were and how Nouki really needed to think about them.
With the writer, it was mainly to ask yet again how he liked his
tea or if he could understand why Nouki thought the question was
irrelevant.

Facing Nouki, he was firm and strong, like a stern Western
professor. He seemed inches taller, broader in the shoulders,
and
at least twenty pounds heavier than when he turned toward the
writer and, like an unassuming Oriental tea master, slipped away
from the question and expressed concern about the tea getting
cold.

When the pot of tea was finished, P.B. said time was up for
the meeting. The writer was clearly frustrated and unhappy with
the "evasive" answers. As we parted, P.B. told him
gently, "I said I would have a cup of tea with you, but it
seems you didn't want to have a cup of tea with me."

I couldn't help imagining how differently Nouki and the writer
would describe this man to others. Or how long it would take
either of them to get his point.

Inner Guidance

My own first experience of P.B. came in 1977 while he was
visiting my teacher, Anthony Damiani, in upstate New York.
Anthony had been devoted to P.B. since the mid-1940s and drew a
great deal of inspiration from him even though P.B. was adamant
about not being anybody's "guru." P.B. consistently
presented himself as simply "a writer and researcher, with
some experience in these matters--that is all." But Anthony
was well aware that P.B. invested the word "researcher"
with a good deal more meaning than most hearers were likely to
understand.

In 1971, Anthony had founded Wisdom's Goldenrod Center for
Philosophic Studies, in Valois, New York. He liked to have
pictures of saints and sages from various traditions on all the
walls, and he rotated them regularly. When P.B. first visited
the
place and he saw his own picture on the mantle over the
fireplace
in the meditation room he took it down immediately. He told us
that displaying his photograph was "inappropriate," and
recommended that those of us who needed that kind of inspiration
should use a photograph of Ramana Maharishi instead.

P.B. stayed in the area for more than a month, and had at
least one private interview with each of Anthony's students. He
never addressed us as a group and, to my knowledge, did not
address groups in his later years. His work other than writing
was solely with individuals, and he made it clear that he had no
interest in having disciples.

In my first interview with him, I asked about how to cultivate
and recognize inner guidance. He said there are two steps.

"First," he said, "you have to be able to make
yourself completely humble. If you can't do that, then it's a
moot point: there won't be any guidance." He paused long
enough for me to realize that the humility he meant went much
deeper than I understood.

"If you can't do that," he continued, "then you
need to be able to do nothing. Doing nothing isn't the
same as not doing anything. It's active, inwardly attentive. You
can go about your normal affairs, but you refrain from any
decision or action on the specific issue about which you're
seeking guidance.

"There's no telling how long you'll have to wait. But if
you do it right, then when the guidance comes there will be no
doubt about it. It will be vividly clear. And the strength
needed
to follow it will also be there."

In the same interview he asked me, "What particular shade
or aspect of the word 'truth' is most meaningful to you?"

By that time (nearly twenty-nine), I had pretty much decided
that the word truth wasn't a meaningful one for me. I
could relate to the idea of "honesty," based on
reflecting on one's own experience and deepest desires; but
"truth" seemed too much to ask. I could demand honesty
from myself and others, no more and no less. Everyone had and
was
entitled to their own opinion. While I certainly thought some
opinions better than others (particularly my own!), I profoundly
doubted the usefulness of the word "truth."

But as I sat across from P.B. with that thought in my mind, it
seemed absurdly false. The doubt lifted, and I heard myself say
something that sounded much more than just honest. It sounded
like it came from a core of me that knew what it was
talking about. From that time on, I've had no doubt that the
word
does have appropriate content, and that understanding it is an
essential part of being fully human.

It was a simple question, about a word others--including
Anthony--had used many times. But in P.B.'s presence it took on
a
whole new dimension. Others who met him had similar experiences.
I suspect that's part of the reason, as soon as P.B. left,
Anthony put his photograph on the mantle of the meditation room.

Sense Knowledge

A few years later, just before Thanksgiving in 1980, Anthony
asked me if I would go to Switzerland to help P.B. with some
work. P.B. had deliberately not published anything since The
Spiritual Crisis of Man in 1952, although he had been
writing
nearly every day. Now he was beginning to organize the work he
had done in the intervening years, and Anthony wanted to offer
him some help.

In March of 1981, I arrived in La Tour de Peilz, thinking I
was there to function as a good editorial assistant. P.B. soon
made it clear that "the literary work," as he called
his writing, had about the same status in his daily routine as a
tidy and orderly apartment, clean dishes, and good preparation
of
the freshest possible food. Only after I was more or less up to
speed on helping him on that side of things did we spend time
working on his writings.

For the first few weeks, I felt that I was not the best person
for his actual day-to-day needs; and that probably was indeed
the
case. It took me a while to realize that the point was much more
that he was the best for mine.

I wasn't really aware of the extent to which part of me was
reaching out to him through the early weeks for some sort of
"answer;" some sot of ultimate insight that could be
expressed in intellectual terms. As long as that was going on,
things didn't go smoothly. One of the first breakthroughs came
through food.

He liked his fruit at the peak of ripeness. Most of what I
served him was either too green or too ripe for his taste. So
one
day I approached him with a basket of fruit before serving any
of
it with lunch.

"Do you know some way of telling if one of these is just
right?" I asked. When he answered yes, I was so relieved!
Now I could be sure of giving him only the ones he would
actually
enjoy! Then he said kindly, and with a smile, "I have to
bite it."

I can't explain how, but in addition to being very funny, that
remark brought the term "sense-knowledge" to a whole
new light.

Going Deeper

Later he told me that up through publishing the writing of The
Wisdom
of the Overself (published in 1943), he had been
content to quote authority when he was not certain from his own
experience about the truth of certain things. He had relied, of
course, on his own judgment of whom to take as an authority, but
from that time onward, he felt an increasing inner pressure to
write only what he knew was true from firsthand experience
(i.e.,
"research").

That process gradually identified the gaps in his own
development. What had he already written, for example, that he
was not absolutely certain was true? Or what might he be writing
on a given day about which he had even the slightest remaining
doubt?

Many writers may have been content in such a circumstance to
admit that there are some things they shouldn't write about. But
in his case, it enabled him to focus and energize his efforts.
His desire to know more fully, and to help others by writing
more
precisely and more clearly, came to its full strength. Part of
what this meant was that at the peak of his literary career, he
began withdrawing from the trappings, obligations, and
privileges
of fame to focus on filling those gaps.

To my mind, this is the point at which he began to become a
man difficult to write about truthfully, and where his words
begin to become priceless. He was no longer interested in
defending any doctrine, but only in what he could say with
certainty.

"No one can explain," he wrote in his notebooks,
"what the Overself is, for it is the origin, the mysterious
source of the expanding mind, and beyond all its capacities. But
what can be explained are the effects of standing consciously in
its presence, the conditions under which it manifests, the ways
in which it appears in human life and experience, the paths
which
lead to its realization."

Nonetheless, because he considered it so fundamental to
meaningful living, he wrote often about what he meant by the
term
"Overself." Here are a few of my favorites from the
first volume in his posthumously published notebooks.

The point where man meets the infinite is the Overself, where
he, the finite, responds to what is absolute, ineffable and
inexhaustible being, where he reacts to That which transcends
his
own existence--this is the Personal God he experiences and comes
into relation with. In this sense his belief in such a God is
justifiable.

The Overself is the point where the One Mind is received into
consciousness. It is the 'I' freed from narrowness, thoughts,
flesh, passion, and emotion--that is, from the personal ego.

Because of the paradoxically dual nature which the Overself
possesses, it is very difficult to make clear the concept of the
Overself. Human beings are rooted in the ultimate mind through
the Overself, which therefore partakes on the one hand of a
relationship with a vibratory world and on the other of an
existence which is above all relations. A difficulty is probably
due to the vagueness or confusion about which standpoint it is
to
be regarded from. If it is thought of as the human soul, then
the
vibratory movement is connected with it. If it is thought of as
transcending the very notion of humanity, and therefore in its
undifferentiated character, the vibratory movement must
disappear.

It is a state of pure intelligence but without the working of
the intellectual and ideational process. Its product may be
named
intuition. There are no automatically conceived ideas present in
it, no habitually followed ways of thinking. It is pure, clear
stillness.

P.B. is so difficult to speak about because, at least to me,
he seems always tuned to the reality he describes in these
writings. So describing what it was like to be in his presence
is
like trying to describe what it is like to stand--or cook, or
work, or shop, or eat, or think for that matter--in its
presence. On one hand, there was an ego, a highly individualized
person, that I could relate to (in his case a remarkably
refined,
sophisticated, educated, and gentlemanly one); on the other,
there was simply no ignoring a pure, clear stillness in the
presence of which nothing--especially myself--could be seen in
the same way as before. The relationship at the more ordinary
level was interesting enough; but it was how he helped people
discover themselves in that other presence that made him so
extraordinary.

The constant presence of this other "dimension" was
sometimes exquisitely nourishing, sometimes terrifying. On
occasion it made for an intimacy infinitely greater than I have
ever felt with any lover. There were moments when I knew his
thoughts, felt at least some part of his peace, and he knew I
knew and felt them. There were other times when it was painfully
clear that thoughts or feelings I would have liked to hide were
plain as day to him. How things went at any given time depended
on how much I clung to out-of-synch habits and desires, and how
much I could let them slip away and open up to the rhythm of
that
particular day.

He seemed sometimes amused by the process, at other times not
so amused. But tears came like never before when I first
realized
that despite his seeing all my flaws he also saw something much
deeper in me--something I had always hoped was true--and that
his
bottomless love for it was always there. When I could love it
like he did, all the rest was forgiven, I don't mean he
forgave me--there was no sense of his having the slightest
thought or feeling that he needed to forgive me
for
anything. It was simply that in the light of that deeper
something, so capable and worthy of love, the rest is
nonessential; the best was all that was really worthy of
attention, and it could be lived.

I write reluctantly and only because others have since told me
they had the same experience with him. At bottom, it says much
more about him than it does about us.

The Sage's Mind

One afternoon I asked him, "What exactly is it about a
sage's mind that makes that mind so different from the rest of
us?" It was one of many questions I asked that he didn't
originally seem to intend to answer. But I persisted and finally
he asked me, "Well what do you think it is?"

I said that I had never been able to believe that it could be
omniscience in the sense of knowing everything at once; but I
didn't think it unreasonable to conceive that when a sage wants
or needs to know, he could turn his mind toward it in a certain
way and that knowledge would just arise.

P.B. laughed heartily and answered, "It's not even that
good!"

"Well, how good is it?"

"It has really nothing to do with knowledge, or
continuity of intuition, or frequency of intuitions. It's that
the mind has been made over into the Peace in an irreversible
way. No form that the mind takes can alter the Peace."

"You could say it's a kind of knowledge," he
continued, "in this sense. If the mind takes the form of
truth, the sage knows it's truth. If it doesn't , then he knows
that it's not. He's never in doubt about whether the mind has
knowledge or not. But whether it does or not, his Peace is not
disturbed."

I asked if that meant that someone could go to a sage for help
and the sage would be unable to help them. He replied that
sometimes the intuition comes, sometimes it doesn't; he
explained
that when it doesn't come, the sage knows he has nothing to do
for that person. The continuity of frequency of the intuitions
has to do with the sage's mission, not with what makes a sage a
sage.

"You must understand," he said, "that there is
no condition in which the Overself is at your beck and call. But
there is a condition in which you are continuously at the
Overself's beck and call. That's the condition to strive
for."

As he spoke these words, he was the humblest man I had ever
seen before or since. For all the extraordinary things about
him,
all the glamorous inner and outer experiences, all the
remarkable
effects his writings and example have had on others, that
humility is what seems to be the most important fact about him.

It was the first key he turned when he turned his mind to
write. And fortunately for me and many others, it often sufficed
for the door to open and let a sacramental presence illuminate
doubts and questions common to us all.